There is an immediacy to my experience that has carried me along from one moment to the next for as long as I can remember. High stakes. Everything needing to happen right away or not at all. This urgency has driven me to take action, overcome inertia, throw myself into new ventures without being paralyzed by fear. It's been my way of moving through the world: impulsive, yes, but also alive, responsive, engaged.

Last June, at 38, I was diagnosed with ADHD, inattentive type. The diagnosis gave me language for patterns I'd lived with my entire life, but I understood it for what it was: a way of organizing experience, not a disease discovered in my brain.

There's no blood test for ADHD, no scan that reveals it. What the diagnosis named was real—the scattered attention, the freeze response, the years of searching without knowing what I was looking for. But calling it a disorder was only one way to understand what had shaped me.

I was a gregarious, open-hearted child, always excited for the next adventure and interested in meeting new people. I impressed people with my intellectual prowess and assertiveness.

Brimming with potential, my more sensitive nature was easy to miss. My parents were both strong and caring, but their strained marriage and busy work schedules meant that I didn't always receive the deep, consistent attunement my nervous system craved. I had an exciting childhood and adolescence with ample freedom to explore, though what looked like independence sometimes reflected the absence of steady guidance and connection. I found compensatory strategies.

At 14, I began working sporadically in film and television while playing video games, stealing bikes, and breaking into cars at night - seeking recognition in one context, intensity in another. By 15, smoking and selling weed became another form of regulation. At 16, I discovered a youth group focused on contemplative practice, which finally offered tools for self-regulation and genuine community. My nervous system was searching, trying different strategies—some risky, some healthy—all seeking the external scaffolding I needed.

By twelfth grade, the meditation and contemplative practice were bearing fruit. I graduated with honours, after which I participated in a Canada World Youth exchange to Ukraine and Alberta, and began my undergraduate degree.

Everything was on track. Until it wasn't.

At 21, my parents separated and suddenly, the "just enough" relational foundation I'd been standing on gave way. At a pivotal moment of my development, when I was still dependent on them for the elements of executive functioning I hadn't yet consolidated, they became unavailable. My developing prefrontal cortex wouldn't fully mature for another four years, and without the attachment anchor I hadn't realized I depended on, something in me unraveled.

My response was to freeze. Not dramatically, just a quiet retreat inward, a numbing that turned down the volume on stress responses I couldn't process. For the next seventeen years, I ricocheted between pursuits: I dropped out of university, tried chef school, worked on organic farms, studied early childhood care and education, became a parent, pursued Waldorf teaching training, launched and closed a home daycare, almost started multiple business ventures.

Each new path felt like a way to finally ground myself, find my place, create stability. The inspiration was real, the momentum genuine. But I couldn't sustain it. The pattern was always the same: excitement, engagement, then... freeze. I'd abandon ship and search for the next thing.

I rationalized it as idealism, as following my passion, as being open to life's flow. But underneath, I was searching for something I couldn't name - an external anchor to replace the internal one that hadn't fully developed. My role as a father provided some of that grounding, I prioritized that relationship over everything else. But it wasn't enough to fill the void.

By 2024, the pattern had run its course. Two relationships behind me, missed opportunities accumulated, savings depleted through impulsive choices I'd rationalized as opportunities. I'd never felt so low. No clear path forward, no ground beneath my feet. I was destroyed. Depressed in a way I'd never experienced before.

A friend reflected back to me: "This start-stop pattern in your life sounds attachment-related."

That observation changed everything. I began relational- somatic therapy and, for the first time, recognized the freeze response that had been running my life since age 21. Even more striking: I discovered that this pattern began earlier - imprinted at birth when I was delivered by C-section to a sedated mother.

With this new awareness, I could witness the qualities of systemic freeze not only in myself, but also in my parents and grandparents. Three generations of nervous system adaptation, expressing as what would eventually be diagnosed as ADHD.

The diagnosis explained some things. But it left me with questions the medical model couldn't answer: Why had my symptoms intensified so dramatically at 21, when my prefrontal cortex was still developing and my attachment world collapsed? Why had I functioned well enough before, despite the same underlying traits? And why did I see this same pattern in other adults I'd worked with - people whose ADHD symptoms appeared or worsened not in childhood, but following divorce, loss, or relational trauma in adulthood?

The answer, I've come to understand, lies in what Gordon Neufeld and Gabor Maté have been teaching for decades: ADHD isn't purely genetic. It's a potential response when individuals with heightened sensitivity don't receive the level of attachment attunement their nervous systems require - and this can happen not just in childhood, but whenever our relational foundation fractures during critical developmental windows.

Orchid Children: An Epigenetic-Attachment Framework

The medical narrative tells us ADHD is primarily genetic: a fixed brain difference you're born with, passed down through families like eye color or height. But this narrative can't explain why symptoms often emerge or intensify following attachment ruptures in adolescence or adulthood. It can't explain why some genetically identical twins develop ADHD while others don't. And it can't explain why attachment-based interventions sometimes produce transformations that medication alone cannot.

What if we're looking at this backwards? What if the traits we call ADHD aren't evidence of broken brains, but represent something more nuanced: a heightened sensitivity that requires more precise relational attunement to develop into regulated self-direction?

Developmental researchers call this "differential susceptibility" or "biological sensitivity to context." Some nervous systems are like dandelions—resilient, able to thrive in varied conditions. Others are like orchids—exquisitely sensitive, requiring specific conditions to flourish, but capable of extraordinary beauty when those conditions are met.

The orchid child isn't defective. They simply need more. More consistency in caregiving. More attunement to their emotional states. More co-regulation when overwhelmed. More patience with their particular nervous system's organization. When they receive this, they often exceed expectations—creative, empathic, intellectually intense, capable of deep focus on what captures their interest.

But when they don't receive what their sensitivity requires—when parents are overwhelmed, when family systems are disrupted, when cultural conditions prevent the kind of attunement these nervous systems need—the same sensitivity that could fuel brilliance instead produces the symptoms we call ADHD: scattered attention, emotional dysregulation, difficulty with executive function, perpetual searching for something unnamed.

This isn't a disorder. It's an adaptation. The scattered attention isn't just distractibility—it's a nervous system scanning for the secure connection it lacks. The hyperfocus isn't just impulsivity—it's the system finding temporary regulation through intense engagement. The restlessness isn't hyperactivity—it's an embodied search for the external scaffolding the developing prefrontal cortex needed but didn't consistently receive.

When I look at my own story through this lens, everything makes sense. I was an orchid child who received "just enough" to function—enough connection, enough guidance, enough stability—to develop reasonably well through adolescence. My high intelligence, creativity, and capacity for brief periods of intense focus allowed me to compensate for underlying regulatory challenges.

But "just enough" isn't enough for an orchid. At 21, when my attachment foundation fractured at a critical developmental moment, the compensatory strategies collapsed. My prefrontal cortex, still developing and dependent on external regulation from secure attachment figures, couldn't consolidate properly. The freeze response that had been imprinted at birth—when I entered the world unable to find my mother's eyes, her voice, her regulating presence—became the dominant pattern again.

The ADHD that "emerged" at 21 wasn't new. It was always there, latent, managed by sufficient-but-not-optimal relational conditions. When those conditions shifted, the underlying vulnerability expressed itself fully. My nervous system did what orchid children's nervous systems do when the relational soil isn't quite right: it adapted as best it could, but the adaptation looked disordered.

This framework explains what the purely genetic model cannot: why ADHD symptoms fluctuate based on relational context; why secure attachment acts as a protective factor even in genetically susceptible individuals; why some people develop symptoms in adolescence or adulthood following ruptures; why children with ADHD often show dramatic improvements when family dynamics shift or therapy addresses underlying attachment wounds.

It also shifts how we understand "runs in families." Yes, sensitivity may be inherited—that's the orchid temperament, the heightened reactivity to environment. But whether that sensitivity expresses as ADHD or as creativity, empathy, and deep focus depends largely on the relational context. And relational patterns transmit across generations just as surely as genes do.

The hypervigilant parent produces the anxious child. The emotionally unavailable parent produces the child whose nervous system learns not to expect attunement. The overwhelmed parent produces the child whose executive function never quite consolidates, because the external regulation needed for internal development wasn't consistently available. The pattern repeats, not because of genetic defect, but because we can only offer what our own nervous systems learned to hold.

Understanding ADHD this way doesn't deny the reality of the struggle—the scattered attention is real, the difficulty with follow-through is real, the emotional intensity is real. But it reframes what we're looking at. We're not seeing broken brains. We're seeing sensitive nervous systems that adapted to relational insufficiency in the only way they could. And adaptation means the possibility for change.

When orchid children receive what their sensitivity requires—deep, consistent attunement; co-regulation during overwhelming moments; secure attachment that allows their nervous systems to settle—they don't just manage their symptoms. They flourish. The same sensitivity that produced ADHD under conditions of relational scarcity can produce extraordinary gifts when the relational soil is right.

This understanding transformed everything for me. I wasn't defective. I was an orchid who'd been expected to function like a dandelion—and when the conditions weren't quite right, when the "just enough" foundation gave way, my nervous system responded exactly as orchid nervous systems do. Understanding this didn't make the struggle disappear, but it shifted me from shame to compassion, from "what's wrong with me?" to "what did my nervous system need that it didn't receive?"

And here's what gives me hope: if ADHD is fundamentally a relational adaptation rather than a fixed neurological condition, then it remains responsive to relational repair. The nervous system that learned certain patterns in the absence of sufficient attachment can learn new patterns when secure attachment becomes available—even in adulthood. The orchid who struggled in inadequate conditions can still learn to flourish when the relational environment changes.

That's not just theory. It's what I've experienced in my own healing, and what I witness in my clinical work with families. When we stop trying to fix the person and start addressing the relational conditions, when we provide the deep, consistent attunement the orchid child needed all along—transformation becomes possible. Not just symptom reduction, but genuine flourishing.

The question isn't "what's wrong with this brain?" The question is: "what does this particular nervous system need to thrive?"

For parents navigating ADHD with their children, understanding the orchid framework can transform the entire experience. Download my free guide: "Securely Connected: Foundations for Supporting Children with ADHD" for practical strategies grounded in this attachment-based approach.

References

Belsky, J., & Pluess, M. (2009). Beyond diathesis stress: Differential susceptibility to environmental influences. Psychological Bulletin, 135(6), 885-908.

Boyce, W. T., & Ellis, B. J. (2005). Biological sensitivity to context: I. An evolutionary-developmental theory of the origins and functions of stress reactivity. Development and Psychopathology, 17(2), 271-301.

Maté, G. (2000). Scattered minds: The origins and healing of Attention Deficit Disorder. Vintage Canada.

Neufeld, G., & Maté, G. (2013). Hold on to your kids: Why parents need to matter more than peers. Ballantine Books.

Pluess, M., & Belsky, J. (2013). Vantage sensitivity: Individual differences in response to positive experiences. Psychological Bulletin, 139(4), 901-916.